THOMAS LANGMANN presents JEAN DUJARDIN BÉRÉNICE BÉJO A film by MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS JOHN GOODMAN JAMES CROMWELL PENELOPE ANN MILLER MISSI PYLE Produced by Thomas Langmann a La Petite Reine - Studio 37 - La Classe Américaine - JD Prod - France3 Cinéma - Jouror Production - uFilms coproduction Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius Director of Photography Guillaume Schiffman, AFC Original Music Ludovic Bource Casting - Heidi Levitt, C.S.A Production Designer Laurence Bennett Costume Designer Mark Bridges Editors Anne-Sophie Bion, Michel Hazanavicius Associate Producer Emmanuel Montamat Executive Producers Daniel Delume, Antoine De Cazotte, Richard Middleton THE PR CONTACT International Sales All Suites Residence Running time : 1h40 WILDBUNCH 12, rue Latour Maubourg, Email: [email protected] Cannes SALES OFFICE Phil SYMES Cell: + 33 (0)6 22 11 95 25 4 La Croisette – 1st floor Ronaldo MOURAO Cell: + 33 (0)6 24 66 88 22 Phone: +33 (0) 04 93 99 43 13 Virginia GARCIA Cell: + 33 (0)6 24 56 85 43 Fax: +33 (0) 04 93 68 98 01 Cristina SIBALDI Cell: + 33 (0)6 21 76 95 28 www.wildbunch.biz Hollywood 1927. George Valentin is a very successful silent movie star. The arrival of talking pictures will mark the end of his career. Peppy Miller, a young woman extra, becomes a major movie star. - 2 - Interview with MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS Director - 4 - What did you want to do originally? A silent film? A When did you go from a silent film to a black and black and white film? Or both? white silent film with cinema for its theme? Right at the beginning, seven or eight years ago, When I started to think about what this silent I fantasized about making a silent fi lm. Probably film would be, I had two possibilities. Either pure because the great mythical directors I admire most entertainment, a spy fi lm in the vein of SPIES by Fritz all come from silent cinema... Hitchcock, Lang, Ford, Lang - which inspired Hergé to create Tintin in my Lubitsch, Murnau, Billy Wilder (as screenwriter)... opinion; or a fi lm dealing with more serious issues, But mainly because as a director it makes you face probably involving more work. This was more appealing your responsibilities, it makes you tell the story in to me, because as a result we would move away from a very special way. It’s not up to the screenwriter, “OSS”: I wanted to work with Jean again but didn’t nor to the actors to tell the story - it really is up to want to end up doing the same things. I didn’t want the director. In this genre everything is in the image, this project to be perceived as a whim, or a gimmick, so in the organisation of the signals you’re sending to I started looking for a story that could fi t into this format. the audience. And it’s an emotional cinema, it’s Jean-Claude Grumberg, screenwriter and sensorial; the fact that you don’t go through a playwright, but also a friend of my parents, had told text brings you back to a basic way of telling a me the story of how one day, while he was talking story that only works on the feelings you have to a producer about a silent movie actor who had created. It’s a fascinating way to work. I thought been wiped out by the arrival of the talkies, the it would be a magnifi cent challenge and that if I producer had replied: “That’s wonderful, but the could manage it, it would be very rewarding. If I ’20s, too expensive, couldn’t it be set in the ’50s?” said it was a fantasy more than a desire, it’s because I remembered this story and started to work in that each time I mentioned it. direction, to look into that episode of the arrival of the I’d only get an amused reaction - no one took talkies. I don’t make fi lms to reproduce reality, I’m not this seriously. Then the success of the two “OSS” a naturalistic director. What I love is to create a show fi lms changed the way people reacted to: “ I want to and for people to enjoy it and be aware that’s what it make a silent fi lm.” It wasn’t perceived in quite the is, a show. I am interested in the stylization of reality, same way. But above all, Thomas Langmann is not the possibility of playing with codes. That how this a producer like the others. He didn’t only take what idea of a fi lm set in the Hollywood of the late ’20s and I said seriously, I saw in his eyes that he believed in early ’30s, in black and white, was formed. I wrote it. It’s thanks to him that this fi lm became possible. very quickly, in four months. I don’t think I’ve ever It was no longer a fantasy, but a project. I could start written a screenplay so quickly. My starting point, working. I told him I would look for a story, that as linked with the desire to work once more with Jean soon as I’d found it and it seemed to work, I’d come (Dujardin) and Bérénice (Bejo), was: a silent movie back and see him... actor who doesn’t want to hear anything about the - 5 - talkies. I circled around this character but as soon as challenge was to determine the acting range; after that I got the idea of this young starlet and the crossed it was quite simple. What was also complicated was to destinies, everything fell into place and made sense, keep telling myself that this project was worth it, that even the themes - pride, fame, vanity… An old-fashion it could be completed. The fi lm goes so much against vision of love, very pure, that also held with the form. current trends, almost anachronistic. We were right Indeed in my opinion, the silent movies that have not in the middle of the AVATAR craze, in full 3D mania. aged much, those that have withstood the test of time, It was as if I was at the whell of a 2CV with Formula even if I don’t want to compare myself to them, are the One cars roaring around me! melodramas. The genre is ideal for this. Simple love Didn’t that add to your excitement? stories that are accomplished fi lms, even masterpieces. Yes, but with time, over one and a half years, you Moreover, if this could encourage audiences to watch can’t escape questioning, having doubts. Thankfully, these fi lms again… In any case they gave me the desire what prevails most of the time, is the excitement of doing to go in this direction, everything being lighter, more something special, of being different, and gradually optimistic, more joyfuf despite everything... seeing the fi lm becoming a possibility, then a reality, and Do you write a silent movie the same way you the amused expressions turning into interested ones... write a talking picture? What are the films that nourished your Yes and no. Yes because I didn’t alter the way imagination and your work the most during the I work, the only difference being that at a given writing of THE ARTIST? point, contrarily to what I normally do, I didn’t There were many. Murnau’s fi lms, particularly write down the dialogues. And no because, I didn’t SUNRISE, which was considered to be the most stop during writing to ask myself pure directorial beautiful fi lm in the history of cinema for a long time, questions: how to tell this story knowing it is not and CITY GIRL, which I tend to prefer... Frank Borzage’s possible to insert intertitles every twenty seconds? If fi lms, which are in the same vein even though they’ve there are too many new developments, if the range is dated more. Murnau is timeless, modern even. Moreover too wide, too many characters, a complex plot, you William Fox, the founder of Fox, encouraged Borzage just can’t do it visually. That was the complexity. I and John Ford to watch Murnau at work. Fox had watched and re-watched many silent fi lms to try to brought Murnau to America because he was “the best assimilate the rules of the form, to understand what I director in the world.” After this experience, Ford made was going to be confronted with. I quickly observed FOUR SONS, a magnifi cent fi lm that really resembles that as soon as the story starts to grow unclear, you lose a Murnau fi lm, like one director replying to another. interest. It’s an unforgiving format, particularly today. It was very moving. At fi rst I watched anything that I People didn’t have too many points of reference at that could fi nd, the Germans, the Russians, the Americans, time, they took the fi lms that were given to them. But the British, the French, but after all, it’s the American habits have changed today, codes have changed. The silent cinema that nourished me the most, because it suits - 6 - - 7 - me more and it is the one that imposed its reality right research and ask you questions. The more research you away… a closeness to the characters, the story... THE have done, the more you can play with it all. CROWD by King Vidor is a moving example. Chaplin’s The “OSS” films are pastiches, whereas THE ARTIST, even fi lms also.